Where the powder lies

MARCH 28, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

Source: Dave Philipps

MIRKWOOD BASIN - For years this bowl on the north side of Monarch Mountain was an out-of-bounds secret. It was where ski patrollers went on their days off, where locals snuck off for the good snow, and where snowcat skiers paid big bucks for fresh turns.

Then, late last winter, Monarch dropped the ropes and opened the fabled basin to all skiers.

They called it Mirkwood because the hidden 130-acre stash of open chutes, steep trees and lurking cliffs reminded locals of the dark, mysterious Mirkwood Forest in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” books.
The modern-day Mirkwood is just as dark. Every run in the 650-vertical-foot basin is rated as double-black-diamond “extreme terrain.” Skiers take a 10-minute walk from the Breezeway lift to a high ridge overlooking a realm of powdery bowls and white-knuckle rock drops that would have the great wizard Gandalf calling for his momma.

The trail map warns that what lies below might contain cliffs with a minimum 20-foot rise over a 15-foot run, and slopes with a minimum 50-degree average pitch over a 100-foot run.

Truth is, most of the runs don’t deserve double-black status. If cliffs and 50-degree chutes lurk in Mirkwood, most must be buried in snow this year.

But the basin does hide great single-black skiing, and there’s something enchanting about Mirkwood beyond the pitch: the snow.

Wind dumps more snow into the U-shaped bowl than any other place on the mountain.

“On days when we get only a few inches of snow at the base, we can get almost a foot in Mirkwood,” said Monarch ski patroller Andy Majeski on a recent morning.

To prove his point, he led a group of visitors to a narrow alley through Mirkwood’s trees called Gollum.
At the lodge below, four days a-year skiers had trampled the three inches of newfallen snow like an army of orcs. But up in Gollum’s trees, the 18-inch-deep fluff lay untouched at midmorning.

“Go ahead, whoop it up, all the lines in here are good,” Majeski said.

Want to try out Mirkwood Basin?
Monarch is hosting a free ski day Feb. 13, and offering two-for-one lift tickets Feb. 14.
before he dashed through a slot in the trees and disappeared in a puff of powder.

BLACK RUNS AHEAD
Mirkwood is more than just great skiing. It’s a sign of black times coming to the Rockies.
The Mirkwood Forest in Tolkien’s lore was once a pleasant, green wood that turned evil as the shadow of the dark lord Sauron spread across the land.

A blackness is spreading across the Rockies too — though this one isn’t so much evil as it is expert. Every new ski run opened in Colorado this season was either black or doubleblack.

Breckenridge introduced lift access to the 12,840-foot summit of Peak 8 and a phalanx of near-vertical couloirs called The Lake Chutes. Aspen Highlands installed the Deep Temerity chairlift so skiers can plunge an additional 1,000 feet down the mountain’s expert Highlands Bowl. And Silverton Mountain added two 50-degree couloirs to its “lift-served backcountry” experience.

“That’s just the way things are going,” said Monarch CEO Rich Moorhead. “All the resorts are tending toward the extreme stuff. We opened Mirkwood to be a part of that.”

The shift is being driven by skiers, said Michael Berry, director of the National Ski Areas Association. “We’ve got an interesting situation where the people the industry most needs to attract are looking for more aggressive backcountry-type terrain,” said Berry, explaining the recent expansions.

Colorado’s ski areas have done a good job of holding on to baby boomers and luring kids, he said, but 20-year-old and 30-year-old skiers are more finicky.

“The young people want ’cat skiing-type terrain, and the resorts are trying to give them that extreme powder experience with the security of in-bounds skiing,” Berry said.

But it isn’t just changing demographics driving the growing blackness. After all, in the olden days when the baby boomers still had good knees, they relished powder just as much as their Generation-X kids. But double-black runs were as rare as hobbits.

GEAR MAKES THE SKIER
So why the sudden change?

Put simply, double-black demand has been driven by the growing number of really good skiers. And the growing number of really good skiers is due not to practice or skill (sorry skiers) but to better gear.
During the past 10 years, skis have undergone a revolution — from straight and skinny to wide and hourglass shaped. The Twiggy-to-Pam Anderson makeover has made turning a breeze, even in steep, deep powder.

“I was ripping down stuff in Blue Sky Basin at Vail the other day that I would never have been able to do on old equipment,” Berry said. “The new stuff allows us pretty good skiers to go where only the very best could go before. The industry has to respond to that. You’re only going to see more of this extreme inbounds terrain.”

That’s good news for good skiers. They’ll have the new terrain mostly to themselves.
Jeff Davis, a telemark skier from Gunnison, stood at the top of Mirkwood trying to decide which untracked face to ski.

“They might be in the lodge, but you don’t typically see the Texans up here. It’s locals or it’s no one, like this morning,” he said. “That’s why this place is so great. Something for the locals that never gets crowded.”

That’s the magic of new bowls like Mirkwood. The powder has a certain power over skiers. Once they experience it, they don’t want to share it with others. It becomes their precious. And it draws them back to powder stashes like Mirkwood again and again.